In Social Motive‘s series on the five core social motives, we explore just what it is that drives us to feel, think and act.

According to social psychologist Dr Susan Fiske, the basis behind our decisions in social situations can be distilled into five core motives: trust, understanding, growing, influencing, and belonging.

Understanding these five core social motives is essential to any situation where we interact with other people; in essence, the five core social motives make up the very fabric of our lives.

To understand

Why is it that when we take the train/tram/bus, we get so edgy around people acting strangely? Why do you understand exactly what I mean when I say ‘acting strangely’?

We share a common understanding of what it means to ‘act normally,’ that is, within a range of expected behaviours. It is vital to life and a part of our evolutionary psychology.

“People are demonstrably motivated to develop a socially shared understanding of each other and their environment. A shared information framework allows people to function in groups and in any kind of relationship.” (Source: Fiske and Yamamoto)

Absent passengers acting strangely, a train/tram/bus ride can even, God forbid, become a relaxing part of the day.

Why is it important to understand?

Understanding underpins the social motive to belong. We need to understand first the intentions of another person/situation (good or bad) before then deciding whether they have an agency to act on those intentions, and therefore whether they are of value/worth avoiding. This knowledge – which can be garnered by body language, symbols, social customs, accent, costume etc. – informs and influences how we respond to others.

What does understanding look like?

As a social motive, understanding frees and guides our decision making process. It is like checking the weather forecast before going outside, or buying a book based on the author or genre – you know what you’re going to get. Understanding this makes easier the investment of time/effort/emotion/health.

The absence of understanding can be a dangerous thing for one or both parties. In fact, it can be terrifying to the point of inhibition. There is a reason the xenomorph from the Alien franchise is the stuff of nightmares: its motivations, morphology and modus operandi are alien in both the figurative and literal senses. It is a complete manifestation of the unknown.

How do we understand?

The human experience is easy for us to understand. Across cultures and within our own, there are many basic human processes that we can recognise: body language, tonality, facial expressions (part of why the wearing of sunglasses can be intimidating). Shared experiences and knowledge transfer engender understanding between parties, which is why there are so many team-bonding activities within organisations that are about getting to know one another.

The necessity of understanding can be highlighted by the awkwardness of forced social situations. When you meet someone for the first time, how are you meant to relate beyond a comment on the weather? You don’t know what their sense of humour, if any, is like. What offends them? What are their taboos? Some of these are the reasons for unspoken, unwritten and commonly understood social conventions: they lubricate our decision-making processes.

What does it mean in the age of digital communication and social media?

The digital age has shaken things up. As my colleague Sophie pointed out in her discussion on the social motive ‘to belong’, we are now walking billboards of photos, hashtags, likes, forums, groups, selfies, metadata, comments, bios and aspirational images. It’s like standing in a bar with all the information you need to strike up a conversation emblazoned on each person’s clothing (this is what makes dating apps so successful). At a glance, you can see what makes the other person tick.

So, like creating your own profile on a dating app, the purpose of digital communications and marketing for a business is twofold: 1) to reach out to people, and 2) to help them reach out to you. At the business end, it’s a simple game: you need to concisely and clearly communicate your essence to your customers and clients. What are you about? What do you stand for? What value do you offer? But this is more than selling yourself or your image.

With so much information at so many fingertips, the age of the hard sell is over. Because the marketplace – along with information seeking – has largely moved online, customers are not placed in a position where they are forced to make an immediate decision. If they feel pressured or alienated, they will simply click on a different link, switch tabs or scroll on.

Subtler approaches to communication must be taken. Producing content, nurturing customer and client relationships and providing a consistent brand tone and voice is part and parcel of helping customers to understand what you are about, inducing a better relationship and a greater sense of community.

As a business, being understandable, being consistent and even being predictable allows people to make decisions. McDonald’s isn’t one of the most successful businesses in history because they offer the best burgers. They are so successful because everyone understands that when they walk into a McDonald’s they understand exactly what they’re going to get – a case of ‘better the devil you know’.

So put communication and understanding at a premium: understanding your customers and helping them to understand you. The last thing you want to do is to be bursting out of anyone’s chest unexpectedly and interrupting dinner.

In Social Motive’s series on the five core social motives, we explore just what it is that drives us to feel, think and act.

According to social psychologist Dr Susan Fiske, the basis behind our decisions in social situations can be distilled into five core motives: trust, understanding, growing, influencing, and belonging.

Understanding these five core social motives is essential to any situation where we interact with other people; in essence, the five core social motives make up the very fabric of our lives.

To Belong

When I think of belonging I think of kindergarten. I was in a class with Year 1 students, one of them being my best friend Sarah – my best friend until the class was separated for two hours one day and I interacted with my year level. I mean, it wasn’t a harrowing life experience; we played dress ups while Sarah’s cohort did math. Still, it was then I decided it would never work. Different worlds. Romeo and Juliet.

Lunch came, and I was carefully unwrapping my Kinder Surprise. Dairy intolerant, I was only in it for the toy; this left Sarah guaranteed at least half of the milk dome every day.

‘It’s a KINDER surprise,’ I spat, like a certain incensed dictator at a Nuremberg rally. My new friend (follower), whose name I don’t remember now and probably barely knew then, giggled, as we shared my chocolate.

Tiny monsters. Reveling in our shared destruction of a seven-year-old.

Fiske recognises belonging as one of the five core social motives, and it’s not difficult to see why it made the cut. To understand the influence of belonging in our lives, we only need to think about what happens in its absence: tragedies like Columbine are blamed on the sense of isolation, not fitting in – tragedies like High School Musical also share an intrinsic relationship with the significance of belonging.

Belonging is the fundamental core motive that drives us as people; anything that has such bearing on us as human beings, and our interactions within the world, has a relationship with business and marketing that cannot be understated. The emergence of new media has intensified this link: within the digital sphere we are all connected, and often whether we like it or not. I have deleted Facebook but have Facebook messenger attached to my mobile phone number, I recently unfollowed a brand on Instagram; they have sponsored content that remains in my feed. You have heard someone say ‘Damn Daniel’. Even Ron Swanson has a mobile phone. It’s impossible to fully disconnect.

But, why would we want to? We are at our best when we are connected in social networks; we suffer when we aren’t – even those of us who are anti-online are pulled to it, for the very simple reason that we want to belong. Once upon a time we had no choice but to belong – we had to work together to meet basic needs, such as food and warmth. Then there are the other things we need in life – love, comfort, and meaning – that are all intrinsically linked to our sense of belonging. Working at a call centre, where I spend my day talking to people who often don’t want to talk to me (they just want their missing bread), has illuminated this for me: my sick days tend to fall on the days my two allies are also ‘sick’, or free.

What does this mean for online marketing and business? If consumers are driven to belong, how can we make them? And, as businesses, how do we belong in the online and offline sphere? How do we find our place? What is the marketing version of the culmination of Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens singing ‘We’re All In This Together’? It’s simple: create a community.

The online medium has allowed us to redefine centrality. When you are presenting yourself online, more than ever, the power remains in the hands of your audience, the people you are trying to reach. This shouldn’t be intimidating – it’s exciting.

This idea of belonging is fundamental to the way we have always advertised and marketed, the ‘everyone’s doing it’ model of old advertising on TV (before our Instagram feed told us what everyone is actually doing) has evolved into ‘everyone WILL be doing it.’ Even as ourselves, we are representing brands, a walking billboard – Hi, I’m Blah Blah, I go for this football team and this is my favourite show. I study Blah at university, and live in Blah Blah. My favourite drink is Blah and I can often be found sipping it at Blah Blah Blah.

We define ourselves, and how we belong, without even thinking about it. It’s often outlined in our Instagram bios. Be something someone says about themselves: their favourite clothing brand that they can tag in their Instagram flat lay, their favourite coffee place, the cool band they saw on the weekend. We want to belong, that’s the easy part. But as a brand you just have to be something people want to belong to.

In Social Motive‘s series on the five core social motives, we explore just what it is that drives us to feel, think and act.

According to social psychologist Dr Susan Fiske, the basis behind our decisions in social situations can be distilled into five core motives: trust, understanding, growing, influencing, and belonging.

Understanding these five core social motives is essential to any situation where we interact with other people; in essence, the five core social motives make up the very fabric of our lives.

To Influence

Why is it that some relationships develop fast, when others seem to take forever? What initiates them, and how do we make them last?

Last weekend I caught up with my friend Anna, whom I hadn’t seen in about a month. Anna brought a friend I hadn’t met before. Already when we were making our way to one of the quiet corners of the café, I noticed Anna and her friend seemed very close – it was something with how they moved and how they expressed themselves – which was something that surprised me. I thought I knew all of Anna’s best friends. Maybe this was a childhood friend now living overseas, I thought. Anyway, we got our coffees and sticky puddings and started to recap what we had been up to since we last met.

‘I haven’t seen you since that rooftop launch party,’ I said.

‘Really?’ Anna said. ‘That’s where I first met Dana.’ She pointed to her new friend. It turned out that my initial reaction, them being best friends, was more or less correct. They had met at the party, realised they lived in the same suburb and the following day started to take regular evening walks. A lot can happen in three weeks, like strangers becoming inseparable best friends.

How unexpected, how almost magical, I thought. But pondering it more closely, I realised relationships aren’t supernatural or irrational. At least not solely. In fact, relationships can be analysed and understood. Given the right conditions, friendship is even likely to occur. It might sound too scientific; some might argue that you can’t thoroughly understand and quantify human minds the way you can analyse matter or forces of nature. Certainly a valid argument, but not the whole truth.

Take, for example, the concept of geographic proximity. What is undoubtedly needed to become friends is some sort of physical (or digital) connection. Basically, you need to meet. It is exceptionally hard to befriend someone you have never met, or met once but never met again. Some of your best friends are probably people you involuntarily had to share a physical space with, like, say, in primary school. You spent time together, and in the process of doing so, you became friends. I would dare to guess that there are people out there that you have much more in common with than your current circle of friends, but if you never meet these new people, it surely will be tricky to befriend them.

‘But meeting a person is not enough to become friends,’ you say. There are people from high school that I definitely don’t hang out with today. True. To increase the chances of forming a relationship, you also need to interact. Sometimes this is part of what is called influencing each other. ‘Influencing’ might sound harsh, as if there is some sort of shenanigan or trickery in play. However, any actions we label ‘influencing’ is really you extending your senses to find your place in this small portion of the universe, to try to shake that feeling of being lost in a vast world. You reach out to your surroundings – thereby influencing them – and are met by someone else who is doing the same thing. I influence you, at the same rate as you are influencing me. What this does is create a sense of familiarity, a mutual feeling that you are both in control of the situation. Studies show that people who feel that they have control of their lives live happier, healthier and even longer lives. Quite the benefits, I would say.

When letting your customer influence your business, you are offering them this sense of control. And in doing so, you are paving the way for a long-lasting relationship. Encouraging this crucial activity can be complex, but shouldn’t be a difficult task.

Building this relationship can be improving the ways customers can contact you. It can be showing how much you appreciate user comments. It can be letting them know that you are listening. To shake hands, you both need to reach out. And if you keep holding on to that hand – interacting while maintaining proximity – a friendship is destined to start to grow. The beauty of it is that we want to befriend each other, simply because we are human beings. And as such we have a need to to reach out to our surroundings and develop relationships. It is a need that is connected with the survival of the human race, which means that this was the case ten thousand years ago, as it is still the case today.

***

When I had finished my soy latte I hugged Anna and shook Dana’s hand. On the tram home, I received a text from Anna, saying that Dana forgot to invite me to next weekend’s potluck; that she would love to see me there. ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Count me in.’ I have already made plans to bring my home-made hummus. She might like it. If this keeps going, who knows, I might suddenly find myself having made a new friend.

In Social Motive’s series on the five core social motives, we explore just what it is that drives us to feel, think and act.

According to social psychologist Dr Susan Fiske, the basis behind our decisions in social situations can be distilled into five core motives: trust, understanding, growing, influencing, and belonging.

Understanding these five core social motives is essential to any situation where we interact with other people; in essence, the five core social motives make up the very fabric of our lives.

To trust

Trust is one of the most important elements of any human relationship. It is one of the first and most valuable things we learn as infants, and it continues its importance deep into our adult lives.

What makes trust so important?

The social motivation to trust is essential to decision-making and action-taking. We need to trust that we can make our decisions and take action free from punishment, shame and alienation.

Trust, then, is the freedom to act. The two-way transfer of trust in a relationship makes it strong, just as trust does between members of larger groups. Trust relies on the principle of reciprocity – both reward for those who repay it and punishment for those who break it.

What does trust look like?

When you walk out your front door in Australia, you trust that you will not be arrested or impeded by the authorities provided that you don’t harm others and act within the bounds of the law. In return, the government (ideally) provides you with a safe and supportive society in which to pursue your own route to happiness.

On the balance sheet, this results in a richly diverse and strong society because of the constant and unimpeded transfer of value – cultural, physical and intellectual – between all stakeholders.

To illustrate the effects of the opposite, compare Australia to North Korea, where the absence of trust between government and citizens has had dire consequences. A distrust of government might even partly explain the stunning popularity of a certain orange-coiffed presidential candidate.

On an interpersonal level, trust allows you to express yourself and be who you are. In trusting relationships, you can act more freely with the knowledge that your partner has got your back.

This transfer of value is (at least ostensibly) selfless and requires both parties to give up or risk something in order to gain something.

What does it mean in the digital sphere and for content marketing?

Trust is gained and grown by offering up something for nothing. You must make an investment of time and value and bear a bit of risk without asking for reward.

Conversely, trust can be diminished and eroded by being pushy, sleazy and overly salesy. This has never been more true than in our day and age where there are myriad avenues with which businesses can reach consumers and each other.

If content creation forms a part of your strategy for reaching out to customers, clients and patrons, your content must either surprise, inform or entertain – and ideally all three. If it is failing to do this, or if it continually asks for a value exchange, trust will decay, the brand’s standing will diminish and the business will appear detached from reality – corporate, impersonal and uncaring.

Worse, if it takes the form of clickbait (which, happily, is on the decline) the true nature of your content and content strategy will be exposed for what it is: desperate. And as readership/engagement drops off, so begins a vicious cycle.

‘I know what you mean, Blair. Trust’s a tough thing to come by these days. Tell you what: why don’t you just trust in the Lord?’

It follows that sustainable marketing strategies and business practices rely on the steady growth and maintenance of relationships between business and client. You must work to ensure your content and communications aren’t based around shallow vanity metrics such as simple clicks and likes.

By providing a small investment of time and risk – and quality content – you will be rewarded with loyalty and trust. This is why trust – society’s mortar and key to successful personal, social and business relationships – is one of the five core social motives.

And as the saying/Hallmark card/Instagram inspo-quote goes: trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair. Ensure you respect it. Because if you don’t trust anyone and no one trusts you?